Friday, April 11, 2008

POETRY FRIDAY: Workshop, A Poem by Billy Collins

Are you "into" analyzing poetry? Do you find it more difficult to critique your own poems or the poems of other writers? Here is a poem by Billy Collins that I thought would be a good selection to post this second Friday of National Poetry Month.

WorkshopBy Billy Collins

It gets me right away because I’m in a workshop nowso immediately the poem has my attention,like the Ancient Mariner grabbing me by the sleeve.

And I like the first couple of stanzas,the way they establish this mode of self-pointingthat runs through the whole poemand tells us that words are food thrown downon the ground for other words to eat.I can almost taste the tail of the snakein its own mouth,if you know what I mean.

But what I’m not sure about is the voice,which sounds in places very casual, very blue jeans,but other times seems standoffish,professorial in the worst sense of the wordlike the poem is blowing pipe smoke in my face.But maybe that’s just what it wants to do.

I also love the fact that the poem comes from the book The Art of Drowning... definitely that's also a way to read poetry, to throw oneself in, to flounder, drink it in, and let it fill one to drowning...

I love this poem, Elaine. I also love workshopping poems, which I think can be helpful. But this is a perfect portrayal of someone workshopping a poem that's probably dreck and is totally inaccessible to anyone but the poem himself (and maybe even to him). Thanks for sharing it!

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